Mary Tasillo, studio manager of Common Press
Last year, the Common Press, a letterpress and book arts studio founded at Penn in 2006 during the 300th anniversary celebration of Benjamin Franklin’s birth, made a couple important moves. The studio, a collaboration between the Weitzman School of Design, the Penn Libraries, and Kelly Writers House, moved from the Morgan Fine Arts Building to the basement of the Fisher Fine Arts Library. And it hired its first-ever full-time studio manager, Mary Tasillo.
Leading by Design explores the work of PennDesign alumni, faculty members, and supporters of the School who are expanding the practice of art and design to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Monument Lab, a public art and history project led by Ken Lum, professor and chair of fine arts, and Paul Farber, lecturer in Fine Arts, presented the public’s responses to the question: “What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia?” The answers, all 4,500 of which are available online, reflect a dizzying variety of ideas for reimagining the symbolic landscape of Philadelphia.
PennDesign’s Fall 2018 Lecture Series brings more than 30 of the world’s leading architects, landscape architects, planners, artists, and preservationists to Philadelphia. They’ll offer perspective on architecture as a catalyst, the politics of modern memorials, the impact of LGBTQ history on historic preservation, and more.
Photo: Albert Lee, Office of the City Representative, City of Philadelphia
On June 5, 2013, the demolition of a building at 22nd and Market Streets in Center City, Philadelphia, led to the collapse of a neighboring Salvation Army store, killing six people inside. Through a competition held at PAFA, artist and alumna Barbara Fox (Fine Arts, CW’74) was selected to lead the design for a memorial to be created at the site. Architect and alumnus Scott Aker, AIA (MArch’15), a lecturer in undergraduate Architecture, and architect of record for the memorial, collaborated with Fox, the June 5 Memorial Committee, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS). PennDesign recently met with Fox and Aker at the site for an interview, folllowing the public opening on June 5, 2018.
Associate Professor of Fine Arts (Emerging Design Practices), Orkan Telhan will be featured in Sensorial Urbanism, a forum facilitated by the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the
Ana Beatriz Valente Soares is both an architecture and fine arts student in the School of Arts and Sciences who expects to graduate with her bachelor’s this May. Hers is not a common double major, so she has worked hard to create a path for herself that checks all the boxes of her unique interests.
Comberg and the Class Action collective recently created a series of billboards with the Union for Concerned Scientists on the relationship between religion and science.
This fall, the Department of Fine Arts is launching PostScript: Immersive Studio Project, a new multi-use exhibition space and a series of public programs in 2018 and 2019.
The three winners of the 2018 G. Holmes Perkins Teaching Awards
Eric Bellin, lecturer and PhD candidate in Architecture; Sharon Hayes, Associate Professor of Fine Arts; and Ben Krone, lecturer in Architecture, received G. Holmes Perkins Teaching Awards. Named in honor of the architect and longtime faculty member who served as dean of the School from 1951 – 1971, the awards are based on the input of students at PennDesign, to recognize distinguished teaching and innovation in the classroom, seminar or studio. They were presented by Fritz Steiner, dean of the School of Design and Paley Professor, at the Awards Ceremony on May 12 in Meyerson Hall.
Jacolby Satterwhite, Blessed Avenue, 2018. 3D animation and video, 19:20. Edition of 5 with 2 APs. Courtesy Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome.
On the third floor of an unassuming Chinatown building, a dark hallway leads to Blessed Avenue, Jacolby Satterwhite’s psychedelic quest into queer desire and memory, a twenty-minute digital animation created with Maya computer software.
